Jamwise #43 - Best Albums of 1993, pt. 2

Habits are good for fun stuff, too. Plus: Wu-Tang Clan, The Breeders, De La Soul, Yo La Tengo, Depeche Mode, Pearl Jam

Before this project, I didn’t think much about how I listened to music. But looking back I’ve always been streaky and inconsistent, with long stretches of very little music at all. That seems weird to me.

My Liked playlist is the best record of this trend. When I filter by Date Added, I see streaks of a month or two when I was furiously searching for new music, and then several months might pass before I found anything new. I’m not entirely sure what I was doing between these bursts of new music - I was probably either listening to my old playlists, overplaying the new songs I’d just found, or not listening to much music at all. I’ve been streaky like that in pretty much every hobby in my life, so it makes sense.

But the weirdest thing about that inconsistency is that I know the positive effects music has on my life. When I work, for example, I know I don’t get as much done without music on. I’m distractible and bouncing around until I put on something ambient or familiar to drown out the noise. I notice when I’m not listening to music, but for one reason or another I sometimes still avoid it. Maybe I try to justify that by thinking I should be able to focus without music. Or maybe it’s just laziness, or the fact that I don’t have anything new in my playlists, or just force of habit.

I don’t really think about leisure activities as things I need to form a consistent habit around. I figure I’ll do fun stuff when I feel like it, so what’s the point of making a habit around my fun activities? Habits are dull, fun stuff should be spontaneous, right?

To my surprise, I’ve actually found that not to be the case. I’ve been listening to multiple new albums consistently for almost a year now as a part of this project, and I’ve actually found that the habit, the weekly-ish cadence of listening to new music and reflecting on what I’ve heard, has increased my enjoyment of the music I hear - not to mention the known music I also listen to from time to time. A habit has made my leisure activity even more enjoyable, and has injected zero stress into it, as I might have once feared.

I think the reason is that habits remove the “decision fatigue” involved in choosing what to do. Decision fatigue is even worse when there’s so much music to choose from. So what I’ve done, inadvertently, is created a habit of listening to something totally new to me without worrying about whether I’ll like it. This has removed all decision fatigue from the process, which lowers any residual stress that might have been involved and makes the music even more enjoyable. Consistency, even in a fun leisure activity like listening to music, has immense benefits. Good habits are fun, and I’ll have to find some more places to apply that in my life.

Project BAE - Best Albums Ever

I have to admit, I went a little nuts this week with the 1993 albums. I just couldn’t contain myself, so there’s going to be a part 3. And three parts still won’t even cover the whole list I wanted to get through. I don’t know why 1993 seems like an overlooked year, to be honest - it’s simply loaded. We’ll see if 1994 lives up to the hype compared to this.

So now in no particular order, here are 6 more dope albums from 1993. I’ll accept further recommendations as always, but it might be similar to offering a hotdog to Joey Chestnut after he just finished an eating contest. I’m stuffed, dog.

Also part one is below, in case you missed it.

Jamwise #42 - Best Albums of 1993

Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) - Wu-Tang Clan

Note - it was a little hard to find the original album on Spotify. The OG track list contained the censored versions of the songs, which are a little bit pointless for many of these songs. So the link is to the expanded edition, which includes the original tracklist with a few extras. I listened to the original tracklist based on the expanded edition above, then went back for the deluxe version later just for fun.

Is grunge rap a thing? This has the grimy energy of a grunge-alt album layered with the NY undergound sound. It’s nerdy and smooth, like a comic book store owner who goes all Clark Kent on us and tears up clubs on the weekend. It’s also dusty and analog-sounding, a collection of weird beats and samples that find ways to support no less than nine vocalists as we’re introduced to the Wu-Tang Clan and their obsession with verbal and nonverbal kung-fu.

The history and lore around this album has a distinct effect on how much I enjoyed it, and I can’t help but think that’s the way the creators would want it. Wu-Tang members released album after album of uniqueness on the momentum of this album, and I find that knowledge only enhances how cool the introductions on Enter the Wu-Tang sound today. The music stands on its own, but lore is just as awesome sometimes.

Jams

• “Bring Da Ruckus”

• “C.R.E.A.M.”

• “Method Man” (after the skit, anyway)

Last Splash - The Breeders

I had quite a journey listening to this album. I admit I had to go through it about four times before anything really stuck in my head. By the fourth time through, though, I felt like I’d known the songs forever. It was a strange experience; maybe it’s because of the mumbly garage alt rock sound, where the lyrics are mere hints rather than understandable words, with the vocals mixed so far back it’s hard to tell if they’re intentional at all, but something about this album wormed its way into my head like a worm might do to the heart-apple on its cover.

I’m no sound engineer, but to me the recording equipment is overpowered by the actual energy of these songs. To put it another way, I felt a very mellow, fuzzy energy from this album’s mixing - but at the same time, I fully believe a live show comprised of the same songs would be LIT. There’s clearly so much power in the songs, but it’s like the producers decided to turn up the fuzz and turn down every other slider until these well-written and nuanced songs almost turned into static. In songs like “Drivin’ On 9” this fuzz adds to the song’s intended effect, the vocals fading in and out like an old school microphone. But the bigger-bones songs almost overshadow themselves (lol yes I know how pretentious that sounds lol. “It insists upon itself” as the memes would say). I found myself trying to “squint” with my ears to see the full picture through the haze.

But the songs are plain awesome. When they’re imperfect it’s in a very human and endearing way, with ebbing and flowing energy throughout the album that keeps you hooked. There are a lot of distinct varied songs in 39 minutes, and they grow on you more with every repeat listen.

Jams

• “New Year”

• “Cannonball”

• “Flipside”

• “Drivin’ On 9”

Buhloone Mindstate - De La Soul

This album illustrates one major trend I’m noticing in my music taste - anything nonserious, joking, or the least bit self-aware is my absolute jam. De La Soul’s entire premise to this album is that it, like a balloon, “might blow up, but it won’t go pop.” The group was worried about alienating their fanbase by becoming too mainstream, too pop, and this was their response. They make fun of themselves, examine their own sound, and poke at the record labels who would presumably steer them in a more poppy direction to sell more albums. It’s a lot of fun.

I think the root of humor is awareness, and by extension to make fun of oneself requires a high level of self-awareness. There are few things worse to me than music that’s painfully not self-aware (Katy Perry, anybody?), but the artists who know who they are, where they fit in, and most importantly don’t take themselves too seriously are the absolute best.

I try not to take myself too seriously, and albums like this are great reminders to keep pursuing that mindset. I’ll come back to this one for the jazz-infused beats, and I’ll stay for the reminder that music - both creating and consuming it - is supposed to be fun.

Jams

• “3 Days Later”

• “In The Woods”

Painful - Yo La Tengo

I’ve started to see every album that has an element of ambience or abstraction as an opportunity to approach an emerging goal of this newsletter, which is to “get” ambient music. This isn’t ambient by any stretch, but it does have that shoegaze sound that employs lots of droning riffs and noises that hypnotize you into letting the music float you along. My ADHD struggles with that, especially with the noisy interjections sprinkled through this album that jar you out of any dream-state you might achieve. I found “Big Day Coming” the most funny in that it expresses the band’s excitement for what’s to come, that they can hardly wait, while the music meanders along like a dreamer with nowhere to go at all and no urgency to get there.

I don’t mean this in a negative way, but this is boredom music. It’s the feeling of sitting in your room before the internet and scratching the cool “S” into the wood of your bedroom wall, then hiding it behind the curtains so your parents don’t see. It’s a kid doing the rubber pencil thing, or giving themself an “injection” with a mechanical pencil, or sticking their fingers in their ears and going “la la la la la” just to fill the silence. Was the 90’s a boring time? Was all this pent up boredom the reason all the technology that was about to come hit us all over the head like a ton of bricks?

In the end, there’s a fine line between boredom and meditation. It’s all about your intentions. My capitalism-conditioned brain struggles with the idea of letting go and just being bored and in the moment for a while, but this album seems designed around that very idea, and a little purposeful boredom is good for us from time to time.

Jams

• “Nowhere Near”

• “Sudden Organ”

Songs of Faith And Devotion - Depeche Mode

I’m learning that I’m a sucker for the industrial music sound. Maybe I worked in a factory for too long. Maybe I’m turning into a robot of some kind. But not the kind that’s trying to take my place as a writer and destroy art and make a bunch of tech bros temporarily rich before the upcoming tech market crash, but the good kind of robot, like the big friendly robot from The Iron Giant. Or Wall-E, maybe. He was one of the good ones for sure.

Depeche mode is industrial-adjacent at times, with a longing sound and a deep automatic-sounding energy driving each track. The emotional content borders on melodrama at times, but if you buy into the experience it’s not a problem at all. Just pretend you’re in a stadium-sized support group and everybody’s also trying to get over their inner stuff, and you’ll get right into it.

Jams

• “I Feel You”

• “Condemnation”

• “Get Right With Me”

Vs. - Pearl Jam

Early Pearl Jam, man. I gotta say - I started this project to get away from listening to my 90’s alt rock and grunge favorites endlessly, to break away from the cycle of mostly loving music that my demographic is supposed to love.

But even more than 300 albums into my quest, Pearl Jam just scratches an itch in my head. I’m sure there’s a scientific explanation - music during our brain’s formative years, and all that - but I don’t even care about that. Pearl Jam is connected to so many great memories that I’ll never be able to look at their music with fresh eyes. I’ll always see college road trips and basement ping pong tournaments and the first time I saw PJ in concert - when Eddie Vedder handed his onstage wine bottle (a common move of his, at the time) to the guy next to me and we finished it to the guitar solo of “Alive.”

I’ll always associate Pearl Jam’s music with my first electric guitar, with the guitar tabs (a quick and easy way to avoid actually learning to read music) I’d print out on the school computer and put in my binders to study all day before going home and trying to learn to play the songs.

Pearl Jam at Bonnaroo 2016. Photo by Dave’s beer-soaked cell phone - I’m amazed you can even make out their faces with all the jumping around I was doing

I can honestly say I’ll never understand people who dislike Pearl Jam - not because I think they’re wrong, or because there aren’t legitimate reasons to dislike the band, but because I simply don’t have the distance from PJ’s music to make a fair evaluation. I’ll just never get it, no matter how passionately someone might make the case that they’re the worst band ever formed. I’ve been getting better at identifying music I like that many wouldn’t, and understanding the reasons behind that difference of opinion, but not in this case. PJ simply can’t be one of those bands for me, and I figure it’s better to be honest than pretend to tolerate any slander against the band’s dopeness. If you don’t like them, you’re not wrong, I’m just going to use my prerogative as a fan and choose not to understand your opinion because it’ll just ruin my fun.

But in all seriousness, I think everyone needs that one band (or more, for the lucky) who makes them fall in love with their music without any logical reason necessary. That’s the best part of being a fan, after all.

As for Pearl Jam’s second album - Vs. is full of classics, it’s got the wild energy of a young band in their prime, and although nothing can quite match Ten in my mind, this album makes a dang good effort.

Jams

• “Animal”

• “Daughter”

• “Dissident”

• “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town”